I'm Inspired By: Education

Happy New Years!!!!

I thought about my resolve to become a better person and to have more faith in pursuing my dreams in 2010. I wondered, why do people wait until the last damn day of the year to create a list of things they need to change?

Why is changing so brutal a task in the first place? I think in part ignorance is bliss, so why change? But my dad would say, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance". The only problem with learning is that the more you do so, the more you start to challenge all things you've previously learned. And all of a sudden you feel like you don't know too much after all.
Hell, how we view the world in large is based upon what we've been taught. If we're taught that green folks are evil, we'll probably believe it until we meet a green person and learn otherwise. Thank God for experience. But sometimes experience lies, we have one great/bad experience with a green person and generalize about all other green people in the world.

Life is soooooo messy. It's book of rules is so not clear-cut, and often times rules don't apply or can be broken. Fun times! Well then, how can one benefit from real education. First off, in Latin the word education means (Educo) to draw out, lead out, to foster. Basically to extract information that’s already within a person. That’s totally contrary to western education that tries to stuff facts and info into the learner. Think about that for a sec. What if all the answers you need to become a great person lie within you? Hmmmmmm

I think we're moving into a new era in terms of education. A few great minds have just rediscovered that there are several different types of intelligences, perhaps many of them have not even been discovered yet. What does this mean? It means if you're a musical learner and you've been memorizing rote information; you're probably going to be a piss-poor student. And that's when it hit me when I was teaching in the classroom. Beethoven would have sucked at running a 40 yard dash. Einstein would have sucked at freestylin against Jay Z. NO CONTEST! Not now, not neva.

I remember a choir teacher at Morningside telling a student, “Oh wow, I didn’t know you can sing, I never taught you how to read the music.” To me that sentence captures it all. That’s where the majority of educators are right now. While a teacher I tried my best to remain a facilitator not an instructor. Socrates had that method down pact. He only asked the right questions, he only prompted his students to search for the answers. Without critical reasoning, our republic is doomed. Sorry for the dramatics, I'll continue.

What answers are you looking for? What do you need to know in the new year to be more successful? Perhaps it's time to think about WHY you do what you do? Or more importantly, why do you know what you know? Whose rule book are you following? I hope it's your own. I sincerely hope you created it. We borrow from others of course, but in the end, it's our own choices that create our life.

"Nosce Te Ipsum"

"Know Thyself"

Shak

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